Turing Certs, a blockchain-empowered credential platform, helps industries who want to make their valuable records globally verifiable and accessible by reducing time and cost to validate data accuracy and improving public trust & brand equity.
Tell us about yourself?
Jeff Hu, a serial entrepreneur building 2 companies before, is one of the first scholars in Asia be invited to the UC Berkeley Blockchain Lab. He has worked at J.P. Morgan and published 3 blockchain papers in ACM, IEEE and international journal CPE which was awarded the Best Paper in MobiSys’18.
Ian Lin, a crypto and blockchain researcher, stays in Singapore for further market expansion.
He has worked in several VCs and blockchain-related industries as well as written internal researcher papers for investment usage.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Jeff Hu:
Read books. Books about a wide range of topics. Books will be precious nutrient to the growth of mind and the thorough understanding of the world. I believe that we will still be ignorant when at 80’s, since the boundary of the science and facts are no where to be seen.
Ian Lin:
Meet more people. Building the relationship with essential mentors and super interested people is the must in my current lives. They can also bring me the fresh perspectives as well as insightful opinions. I would like to do it more and keep building my own network.
What problem does your business solve?
Turing Certs is trying to solve the fraud issues happening every day around the world. Our visions and targets are making a highly accessible system for people to easily verify the credentials and maintain their brand equity and trust at the same time.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
When Jeff applied to graduate school, he realized it was hard to collect all his credentials and proved them are true to those graduate schools. Usually, it took over several months and cost over 100+ USD to make those credentials valid. Also, from the schools’ perspectives, they are hardly able to verify them as well. Thus, Jeff has decided to start the business and benefit both students and schools.
What is your magic sauce?
Turing Certs is a one-stop website with an ID-based collection. People can login in with Google Account, gather all the certificates, and send them to the verifiers on Turing Certs platform. By using our system, all the working flow becomes smooth and cost less based on our blockchain technology.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Turing Certs aims is to offer our service in more and more countries in the next 5 years. First 2 years, Turing Certs’ target is to dominate Japan and the SEA market and for the next 3 years is to expand in the US and European markets. For Turing Certs, we will make it more flexible so that people can use it in Web 3 identity, real estate, ESG, and more relevant places. We aim to make Turing Certs become a symbol representing trust and safety.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
As the founder of the company, we are always the ceiling. If we do not excel at a sound pace, our company can be easily surpassed or be outdated from the capricious trend of the globe. Stay aware of and well equipped of all kinds of knowledge is the challenge.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
People know that we unwillingly filled our wallet with all types of redundant ID cards representing the same self. People know that verifying someone’s background should not take us so long like old schools. People know the paper will be extinct. People know that the digitalization will be more pervasive and inevitable. People know that trust defines values. When we are showing people what the future will logically be like, they are irritated to be witnesses of the transition that we are heralding.
